By the end of the course the student should be capable of understanding the roles that culture plays in business activities, as well as coming to a personal position of how the challenges of cultural differences can or should be met.

Objectives:

Possess a sophisticated and analytical understanding of the origins of cultural differences via familiarity with various competing and complementary theories.

Understand the difference between cultural and institutional approaches to differences encountered in international business and management.

Understand the ways in which such differences can impact management, organization and business.

Can develop an array of theoretically and empirically founded strategies for dealing with a positively utilizing these differences.

Prerequisite

It is advantageous, but not a prerequisite, to have some background social science knowledge (sociology, economics, anthropology, organization theory).

Examination

4 hour open book exam

4 hour open book exam:

Type of test

Written Exam

Marking scale

7-step scale

Second examiner

No second examiner

Exam period

Autumn Term and Spring Term

Aids

Open Book, Written and Electronic Aid is permitted

Duration

4 Hours

Examination

The exam is a 4 hour written, open book exam. The exam is PC-based with no internet access. It is also possible to write in hand.

The make-up/re-exam will be held as a 4 day- home assignment. There is a strict maximum length of 10 pages (1 page is counted as 2,275 characters including spaces). The re-take will be based on information from the lectures and the books that you have used during the course.

Course content

The course is designed to equip students to analyze and understand the inter – cultural contexts, situations, dilemmas and opportunities that arise from the increasing internationalization of business. Focus is placed upon the possibilities (tools and analytic capabilities) available in a variety of managerial roles with the intention of giving students a solid foundation to take up a variety of more specialized managerial positions.

The course has three pillars: The first pillar comprises of theories that give us the ability to analyses culture and the link between culture and institutions and business and management practices. The second pillar comprises of looking of topics such as mergers and acquisitions, relations between units of multi national corporations, the psycho/social aspects of being an international manager leading and working in multi - national teams and ethics in international/multi-cultural contexts. The third pillar comprises of applying the theories that are applicable to each of the topics in the analysis and discussion of concrete cases.

Teaching methods

The course will have lectures and class discussions sessions. In the lectures theoretical approaches are presented bases primarily on the readings from the course textbook and selected articles. The lectures are intended to be open dialogues and student participation in each week’s topic is encouraged.The structured class discussion take their point of departure in the case material for that week’s meeting and the here the students are expected to offer their interpretations, critiques and solutions to the issues and questions arising from the case.